Category: Historical

Eulie’s Song is a story of Love, and the Longings of the Heart.

Published on by Kathy Lauren Miller12 Comments

 

Love is a powerful force.

Love will define the choices of two girls born a century apart. Choices that will impact not only themselves, but the lives of those they love.

One act of desperation in a moment of fear.

Eulie, born into slavery, had suffered at the hands of cruel men. She was haunted by the heartbreaking choice she made.

Leela, the child of a marriage based on lies, is haunted by nightmares, and dreams she can’t remember. Bullied because of her stutter, she refuses to speak. More than anything, she wants to be like other teenage girls.

When Leela goes to live in her grandmother’s Ante Bellum mansion in the segregated South, she discovers a story inscribed within the beautiful old mural in her bedroom. Lonely, she becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to the artist. Digging into the past, she uncovers a secret so shocking, it upends everything she has ever believed. But when the past and present collide, the lives of those she loves are threatened. 

Will the cost of revealing the truth about her family’s past be worth the price she will have to pay?

Telling Sonny, a novel by Elizabeth Gauffreau

Published on by Kathy Lauren Miller3 Comments

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Author, Elizabeth Gauffreau, totally immerses the reader into a by gone time, a time when vaudeville shows captured the imagination of both young and old. It was also a time of innocence. It is 1924 in a rural town in Vermont where time seems to move at a snail’s pace. Or so it seems to Faby, a young girl on the cusp of adulthood. Newly graduated from high school, Faby is waiting for her life to begin. When a handsome young man, a hoofer in the vaudeville show that has entranced Faby, shows interest in her, Faby’s choice leads her into a life for which she is unprepared. Author, Gauffreau, tells Faby’s story with depth and poignancy. This novel is deeply researched and rich with details of life in the early part of the century. With the ease of a writer who knows her craft, the author immerses the reader not only into a bygone time, but into the mindset of a young girl grappling with the unexpected turn her life has taken. It is also a story of family and of the ties that bind.
Poignant and beautifully written, I highly recommend this remarkable novel.

Deep and Heartrending,wonderful in every respect.

Published on by Kathy Lauren MillerLeave a comment

51j5p18mJNL__AC_US218_Delia Owens has crafted a novel with incredible details and a protagonist who will capture your heart.

When  six year old Kya is abandoned first by her mother and then her father, she is left to fend for herself in a hobbled together shack built by long deceased relatives.  Taught to be aware of strangers and the civilized world beyond the Marshlands and the coast of North Carolina, Kya grows up isolated from human contact. Her friends are the denizens of the Marsh and ocean. Gulls, fireflies and every sort of animal and insect become known to her. Kya learns to fish, steer a flat bottom boat, take care of the engine and dig for mussels which she sells to a kind old colored man named Jumpin’ who runs the wharf.

Kya comes to be known as The Marsh Girl. She is gossiped about and humiliated by the towns folk.

Her one friend is a young boy named, Tate. He is as attracted to the Marsh and ocean has he is to Kya. Eventually, he teaches Kya to read. He gives her science books and poetry. But time passes and Tate must leave her to go to college. Kya feels abandoned again, and her love for Tate breaks her heart. Several years pass, Kya is now a young woman and is preyed upon by the neighboring town’s football star and playboy, Chase. He lures Kya, who is desperate for human contact, into a sexual relationship with promises of marriage. But Kya learns he has married someone else. She breaks off all contact, but he refuses to let her go. One day he attempts to rape her. Beaten and bloodied, she fights back and runs.

Yet, Kya knows he will not stop, that he will keep coming after her. She knows she can’t live in fear waiting for his next attack.

Months later, Chase is found dead from a sixty foot fall from a fire tower within the Marsh. There are no prints or anything to actually connect Kya. In fact, she has an alibi confirmed by numerous people. Still, Kya is accused and arrested. The trial is portrayed in great detail. (No spoilers here!)

This is a wonder of a novel, crafted beautifully. I loved, loved this novel and highly recommend it for New Adults and Adults.

 

 

 

Historical and Tragic

Published on by Kathy Lauren MillerLeave a comment

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 The Life She Was Given, by author,  Ellen Marie Wiseman is a fictional account of the traveling circuses of the 1930’s. The author extensively researched the subject to the point where it nearly overwhelmed the story.

However, the writing was very good and I was thoroughly engaged for most of the novel. While I’m not a fan of spoilers, there will be one here because I feel it is only fair to the reader.

The novel involves two young women decades apart, but are linked by a mysterious and tragic past.  Julia Blackwood returns home to inherit her families’ horse farm. Her parents’ kept a secret that was monstrous. The secret was about another girl, a daughter named Lily. The novel transitions from the past to the near present as Julia seeks to learn more about the mystery. The mystery involves Lily, a beautiful child who was born an albino. The mother kept her locked in the typical Victorian attic her entire young life. At the age of seven, the mother sells Lily to a traveling circus.

Lily goes from the attic prison to another sort of prison. She is owned by a brutal circus boss who uses Lily’s gift with people and her affinity for animals for years to add to his own fortune. She is kept penniless and in fear of being sent to an asylum, as was common in those days for people with disabilities. But, she is befriended by other circus “freaks” and along the way falls in love with the young and handsome Cole who works with the circus elephants. Pepper is an extremely smart elephant, and is loved by both Lily and Cole, but tragedy strikes and Pepper is horribly murdered for protecting her offspring, Jojo. Cole and Lily try to save Pepper, but both are brutalized by the circus owners. 

In the end, the mystery is solved, but the ending for Lily is so brutal and so gut wrenching, I was shocked and sickened. While I don’t need happy endings, I expect, in fiction at least, a more humane ending. I rate the ending as a horror story.  So, while it is an interesting story, I say, reader be forewarned.

 

 

Wondrous and Brillant

Published on by Kathy Lauren Miller8 Comments

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The Lie Tree, by Frances Hardinge

The Writing is simply brilliant and incredibly imaginative.

Faith Sunderly is a young girl coming of age during the late Victorian era, so this is not your average coming of age novel. This is a time when photography itself is coming of age as is the new branch of the investigative sciences of anthropology and archeology . Darwin’s, On the Origin of the Species  has shocked the ideological realm of religion. It is a new world threatening the long held belief that man inherited the world from God with all his fingers and toes place.

Faith’s father, the Right Reverend Sunderly is not only a man of God, but also dabs in the science of the Natural World. His goal is to disprove Darwin’s theory. Unknown to his daughter, Faith and family, he found a  dark and mysterious Tree that is said to hold the truth of everything; it puts forth the fruit of knowledge, but only if it hears lies and the liar must present the world with this lie. The lie must be of enormous consequence. He does this by fostering a great archeological fake onto society, and as he is a man of impeccable  reputation, it is taken on faith by other famous archeologists.  However, the fake is soon discovered and his reputation is sullied and a great scandal ensues.

He and his family are force to flee the scandal, and they are given refuge on an island where they are not well received because of the scandal. Yet, on the island there are others who want the tree and will do anything to get it, including murder. When Faith’s father dies under mysterious circumstance, she is sure it is murder. She is not your average prim and proper young lady of the times. She is clever, and smart and incurably curious, but she must pretend to be simple minded, as all women of the time were thought to be or risk being scorned by society or worse, by being placed in a sanatorium for the mentally unstable which was quite common back then. But she is determined and uses her wiles and her guiles to ferret out the murderer at great risk to herself.

Frances Hardinge has crafted a thrilling and page turning mystery that gets the heart thumping and the pages turning. The writing is gorgeous and the reader is easily transported into the era.  I highly recommend this wondrous novel for any age group, but especially to girls coming of age and to those who want a better understanding of the injustices women endured for centuries.

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